When I was 14 I found my first dead squirrel
lying on a road, when Hilde Marie Kjersem was 14 she played her
first gig. Now she’s 27, her 13 years of experience making
her a veteran by music industry standards, and releasing quality
albums such as this year’s ‘A Killer For That Ache,’
a diverse compilation of songs revolving around her powerful,
dulcet voice and its accompaniment of creative instrumentation.
Over its 11 tracks Kjersem takes us on a journey that begins at
innocence, moves to personal doubt and social outrage, but then
ends victoriously with affirmation in the face of scepticism.
It all begins in rather understated fashion
though with the first couple of songs, ‘Sleepyhead’
and ‘Mary Full of Grace,’ with their focus on winsome
vocals and spare backing, and one may be forgiven for being initially
underwhelmed, but ‘A Killer For That Ache’ is undoubtedly
one of those albums that reward repeated listens. It’s full
of hidden treasures that creep up on you and cast each song in
a new light, such as the tense, foreboding trumpet in the verse
of ‘Midwest Country,’ or the spacey moog that closes
‘Fantasy’ in a surreal vein. No song sounds like the
one preceding it, and often individual songs contain striking
transitions of their own, like that heard in ‘It Is Easy,’
which begins with lamenting piano and guitar but then switches
to lively jazz clarinet before collapsing into a manic section
of downwards-spiralling flute, frightened yells and paranoid,
reverb-laden guitar.
But musical shape shifting is not what
‘A Killer For That Ache’ is primarily about. Above
all, these are songs of quiet internal triumph over externally
insurmountable difficulties; songs, such as ‘Marie Antoinette’
and ‘London Bridge,’ that set artfully understated
overtones of exaltation against their apparently calamitous underpinnings.
Chief among them is the penultimate track, ‘Catching A Star,’
which, from two opening verses of wistful acoustic guitars, horns
and autoharp, gives way to an uprising of celebratory electric
guitar and a defiant, rapturous final verse, with Kjersem singing,
“I cannot be-aware of what lies ahead/ I can only find out
for myself instead.” With this line she ends the album on
a high, knowing that triumph is not about the actual acquisition
of an object, but about resolving to act and to persevere.
And persevere is what everyone should do
with ‘A Killer For That Ache,’ because they will definitely
find themselves inspired. It is an album that, lead by a stunning
voice, runs through a formidable array of emotion, sounds and
styles; and anyone who truly delves into it once, will delve into
it again and again. (Simon Chandler)
For fans of: Cat Power, Nina Nastasia, Jarboe, Feist, Kate Bush,
She Keeps Bees
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